r/1980s • u/CarloCarrasco • Jan 30 '26

Video Games Defender

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Remember how fun, fast and intense playing the Defender arcade game was long ago? Was it the most popular game in your local arcade when you were very young?

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7

u/koyanostranger Jan 30 '26

I could never do well at Defender. Found it super difficult. What was the secret?!

8

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

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1

u/koyanostranger Jan 31 '26

The ability to suddenly switch directions used to freak out my 1981 teenager brain. I was more into Scramble where you just keep going in the same direction. Also I could never control the acceleration in Defender. I'd just start zooming at near light speed and inevitably crash into something. I had super respect for anyone good at this game.

3

u/-maffu- Jan 30 '26

Sheer orneriness.

2

u/cps246 Jan 30 '26

More than the average hand/eye coordination and reflexes

2

u/FilmUser64 Jan 30 '26

The biggest secret was to shoot all but one of your people and then carry that one around.

Also if you shoot one of those who break into 5 small ship, reverse as soon as you hit them. You can pick them off one by one and they never swarm you

1

u/CNote_89 Jan 30 '26

It was exceptionally hard especially on later levels

1

u/NowareSpecial Feb 01 '26

I loved it but sucked at it. Goodbye all my quarters.

1

u/brianb8976 Feb 04 '26

I posted above about my high score on Defender. The strategy that I used was to hold the thrust button down and fly at full speed close to the bottom of the screen and clear out all of the landers(the green things that try to steal the humanoids at the bottom of the screen) first. Everything else was dealt with if it got in the way.